INTRODUCTION

Musicological studies of popular music have mostly been concerned with songs rather than singing, and with professional singers and composers rather than nonprofessionals. The former emphasis is related to the primacy of the written over the aural in musicologist methodology, while the latter derives from aesthetic preferences, and implicitly differentiates and distances the musicologist from the lay audience. Although much has been written about professional singers and composers, musical and verbal forms, and even about the grain of voice of such eminent singers as Elvis Presley and Johnny Rotten, amateur singing-and amateur music-making in general-have been excluded from the traditional perspective of musicology.